An exemplary fire protection sprinkler system for the protection of an occupancy, generally, includes a supply of water, a plurality of automatic fire protection sprinklers interconnected by a network of branch piping and a fluid control valve disposed between the water supply and the sprinklers to control the flow of water therebetween. Automatic sprinklers are, typically, fire suppression or control devices that operate automatically when its heat-activated element is heated to its thermal rating or above, allowing water to discharge over a specified area. The elevation and location of the sprinklers from the fluid control valve define at least the four most hydraulically remote sprinklers. “Hydraulically remote sprinklers” are those sprinklers that place the greatest water demand on a system in order to provide a prescribed minimum discharge pressure or flow. It is understood that a hydraulically remote sprinkler may not necessarily be those sprinklers that are physically located the furthest from the fluid supply or fluid control valve. The piping system is filled with a gas or air in an unactuated state of the system. The system includes an inspector's test connection ITC located outside the protected occupancy and downstream from a hydraulically remote sprinkler. One type of exemplary system is a “dry pipe sprinkler system” which is defined as a sprinkler system employing automatic sprinklers that are attached to a piping system containing air or nitrogen under pressure, the release of which (as from the opening of a sprinkler) permits the water pressure to open a valve known as a dry pipe valve, and the water then flows into the piping system and out the opened sprinklers. Another type of system that includes piping filled with a gas in its unactuated state is a “preaction sprinkler system,” which employs automatic sprinklers that are attached to a piping system that contains air that might or might not be under pressure, with a supplemental detection system, such as for example, a heat or smoke detection system installed in the same area as the sprinklers.
Under fire protection industry standard, National Fire Protection Association (NFPA): Standard for the Installation of Sprinkler Systems, Section 7.2.3.6.1 (2013 ed.), dry pipe fire protection systems are required to deliver fluid to one or more hydraulically remote sprinklers within a requisite maximum time of water delivery based upon the hazard being protected. For example, a residential dwelling unit protected by a dry pipe system requires that the single most remote sprinklers have a fluid delivery time of 15 seconds.
A fluid delivery test can be conducted in order to verify the fluid delivery time of the system. Current manual test methods involve at least two people. One person is stationed outside the occupancy by an inspector's test connection ITC to open the test connection ITC to release air from the system. A second person is stationed by the control valve and waits for the valve to open once the air pressure within the piping system falls below a threshold value. With the two test personnel in communication with one another by, for example by radio, each person holds a stopwatch and coordinates their start at the moment the test connection ITC is opened and their stop at the moment of water delivery. Delivery of water is visually verified at the test connection ITC by the appearance of water at full flow from the test connection ITC. The time of operation of the fluid control valve is manually recorded. The elapsed time from start to stop defines the fluid delivery time. The problem with the current manual test methods is that they introduce test variability due to the human involvement in the test process. More specifically, requiring manual coordination between two handheld stopwatches introduces inaccuracies into the test results. Moreover, because the manual methods verify fluid delivery to the inspector's test connection, the current test methods fail to consider length of pipe from the remote sprinkler to the test connection ITC. These inaccuracies and/or the variables can be costly particularly where the system needs to be redesigned and/or reconstructed to satisfy a fluid delivery time as short as fifteen seconds. Accordingly, it is desirable to have test devices or methods that minimize or eliminate the inaccuracies.